


Old faces, new people

by Readerstories



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Pre-Fall of Overwatch, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 14:01:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12772581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Readerstories/pseuds/Readerstories
Summary: Jesse meets someone he never thought he would see again.This starts during Jesse's time in Blackwatch, a few years before he left and the fall of Overwatch.





	1. The market

**Author's Note:**

> The backstory here is that you and Jesse worked together in the past when you both were in the Deadlock gang. When Overwatch busted them, you weren't caught, so Jesse assumed you either missing or dead, leaning more towards the latter as the years went by.

Honestly, Jesse was having a very nice day. At the moment there was no mission for him, which means he has a few days off and can do almost whatever he wants. So he is out to do some shopping, he has too many shirts that have seen better days, plus Gabriel's birthday isn't far away. Shopping is not his favorite thing in the world, but it's a beautiful sunny day out, and the market he is in is filled with nice food and other supplies he might need.

There are a lot of people there, so it wasn't unexpected when he bumps quite hard into someone, enough to make them both drop their bags. Luckily he didn't have much in his, but the other person had a few items that went rolling. They both scrambled after them, trying to save them from getting lost in the crowd and squished under strangers feet.

"Sorry about that partner, I didn't see ya-" The words die in his throat, because when he looks up he sees the face of someone he hadn't seen in almost a decade. You. You look older and have a different haircut, but still he recognizes you. 

"Jesse?" His name is muttered with soft shock, and he mutters your name back at you. You are both silent for several long seconds before you gain back your senses roughly at the same time. He tries to speak, but before he can really string together a coherent sentence, you gather your things together and take off.

"Hey, wait a minute!" He yells and sprints after you. He yells your name several times, you just ignore him and keep running. He tries to follow you through the crowd, but soon you are nowhere to be seen. Jesse stops, taking a good look around him. He can't spot you, not your face or the back of your head. He curses, earning a few looks from the people around him. 

While he walks back to the base, he starts to wonder if it was really you or if he just spent to many hours under the hot sun and had hallucinated your face onto someone else. But if it throughly were a stranger, nothing would have happened. He would have helped them collect their things and then he would have kept shopping.

It must have been you, and you ran away. Why would his former best friend run from him like that? He tries to think of a plan he can set in motion as soon as he gets back to the base. He needs to find you now that he knows you're alive. It's a pretty big secret to keep.


	2. Grumblings

Jesse can’t stop thinking about you, he know he should be paying more attention to the briefing. He listens with one ear, catching the most important details. He had put out some feelers with some of his legal contacts and a few of the not so legal ones. All he can do now is wait and in the mean time that means paying more attention to what Gabriel is saying. By the time he really tunes in to what is being said, Gabriel is on the last part of his briefing.

“So for the final time, we assume that all the target are going to be heavily armed, so be careful guys. Dismissed.” Jesse and the others get up to leave, a few chatting between themselves. Jesse doesn’t talk to anyone, instead just listening to an anecdote between two other agents about what they’re getting for dinner.

“Agent Mccree, please stay behind when the others leave.” A few of the other agents give him quick look. Jesse stops, sets himself down in one of the chairs while he waits for the others to file out. When the door softly closes behind the last one, Gabriel sits down next to him. 

“It’s been a while since you have been this distracted during a brief Jesse. What’s up?” On the inside Jesse curses. Of course the old man would notice. Things might be a bit tense in general, his own life full of problems, but Gabriel always noticed when something was up with the people he cared about.

“Ya know when I came back from the market the other’ day? When you said I looked like I'd seen a ghost?”

“Yeah I remember, I think you answered with something like ‘Only seen you old man.’ ” Gabriel chuckles. 

“It was a good quip ya gotta admit..... But I kinda did. See a ghost I mean.” Gabriel’s brow furrows. Jesse sighs.

"I saw someone from my Deadlock days, I thought he'd died back when Overwatch busted through the damn place and caught the gang. Do you remember I kept asking for someone for days after I signed into Blackwatch? That was him." Gabriel whistles. 

"No wonder you looked like you did. I vaguely remember you kept asking me if we brought a hacker in. You looked like a kicked puppy every time I said no. Wouldn't tell me who he was and why you cared so much when I asked back." 

"Didn't trust ya much back then." A pause.

"He was my best friend, a few years older than me, a brilliant hacker and decent shot. Thought he might have gotten the hell out of dogde when the bust went down, but since there was nothing from him, I assumed he was dead." Jesse takes out a cigar, starting to chew on it, not lighting it. The doc might have his ass if she found out he smoked and even worse, did it inside.

Fuck, thinking about you and this whole situation makes him so god damn angry. Why hadn't you contacted him back then? Or at least tried to give some sign of life. You were his best friend, or so at least he had thought. Maybe not. It didn't matter that he had been taken in by Blackwatch, he knew you would have found a way if you wanted to. Fuck. Gabriel watches him, the silent watcher to his inner turmoil.

"What are you going to do now?" Gabriel's question snaps Jesse out of his own head. 

"I've reached out to some of my contacts, if there's anything to be found I'll hear it soon hopefully." Gabriel hums, getting up from his chair.

"So now all you can do is wait." Jesse nods.

"Well, good luck with that. But for now, I need you focused on this mission. You think you can manage that?"

"Yeah." Gabriel nods to him and leaves the room. Jesse sighs, Gabriel is probably right. He needs to focus, but he won't stop thinking about you for a while.


	3. Hello old friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So since we don't know where Blackwatch where mainly stationed, I'm using Watchpoint Mesa in Colorado as the base where Jesse got a lot of his training, and also where he spent most of his time when he wasn't at headquarters.
> 
> Also, since this is before Uprising, Jesse still got both his arms. (When you read the Uprising comic, you can see he doesn't have his prosthetic arm yet.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, this chapter was hard to write, struggled with the dialog quite a bit here, not sure how to formulate stuff properly all the time. Hope you like

Two months go by before he get any information on you. Before that it's like you don't exist. Contact after contact saying they got nothing. And then, on his way back from a mission, one of his less legal contacts sends him a message. They had found you, the message read, a small photo attached to the message.

The photo is of you, at a gas station about an hour drive outside of St. George, Utah. It's grainy and in black and white, clearly lifted from a very old security camera. You look relaxed, normal even, standing next to a dark coloured pickup truck. Just another person filling gas before going to destinations unknown. Jesse puts in a request for leave as soon as the plane lands and he can get himself to Gabriel's office.

* * *

Gabriel isn't hard to ask, he grants his request as soon as Jesse tells him why after all these years he suddenly want a vacation.

He scoffs into his lukewarm coffee, vacation his ass. He keeps a close eye on the live-feed from the cameras around the gas station on the screen on his tablet. He wasn't you (if you even kept that skill up from the old days), but he could get access to old camera feeds no problem.

So far no one of interest have walked in. Since it's only one person he is looking for this time he's prepared to wait. Running the plates hadn't helped, since they proved to be fake when they sent him to a minivan registered by someone named Mary Miller in New York. He's not even sure if you'll turn up at the gas station, but it's the only lead he has.

His coffee have been empty for hours when you finally make an appearance. He sees a green pickup pulling into the parking lot and someone stepping put of it. He can't see if it's you, the person is wearing a baseball cap which hides most of their face from the cameras. He do however see the license plate, so he checks if the numbers match up from the fake ones from the picture. They do. 

He turns his attention back to the cameras, watching you fill up the truck before going inside the gas station. You wave to the guy behind the counter while making your way to the bathroom. When you get out from there, you seem to be making small talk with the guy, idly chatting with him while you pick out some water and snacks. The feed doesn't have audio, but he sees your and his lips moving, seemingly having a friendly conversation.

It stings, seeing you so relaxed with someone who is almost like a stranger. Well, to him at least, judging by the way you high five and smile at the guy after you pay you have known him for a while. That stings even more. He believed you were dead, and here you were, alive and having nice conversation with a friend. You climb into you pickup, starting up the engine, Jesse does the same. When you drive out from the gas station, he follows from his hiding place from behind a bend on a side road.

He follows you for quite a while, keeping his distance, even letting a car in-between you as to not arouse suspicion, all while angrily yelling at you inside his head. He can't get over the fact that you are alive and didn't say anything for almost a decade. Sure, it would have been risky for a short while after Overwatch rounded up the gang, but after a while you could have managed to contact him or give some sort of sign of life. But you didn't. And fuck you for that.

He's so angry that he almost doesn't register that the car in-between you and him take off, dissapearing on a side road, leaving just the two of you alone on a long stretch of road. After a while you too blink out, but there's no side road, just a rest stop with what he guesses are building with toilets and a lone bench. He doesn't pull over, that would alert you the fact that he has been following you. It seems however, it's too late for that. When he drives past you, you wave at his car.

He has to do a double take in his back mirror, and yes, you are definitely waving at him. He drives for a few minutes and past several places he could turn around before he does anything. Is it really a confrontation he want to take on a rest stop on the side of a random road? He curses, hitting the wheel hard. He realises this is probably the only chance he got of making that conversation happen. There's no telling if you will actually stick around until he is ready to talk, or if you will disappear of the map and out of his life yet again.

He makes a turn in the middle of the road, if there had been any cops or other people around would have been really stupid. Driving back to the reststop he wonders if you are even still there, or if you have split already. Maybe the wave was to say that you saw him and wanted to say goodbye properly?

Luckily that isn't the case, because when returns you are sitting on the edge of the truck-bed, dangling with your legs and staring out into thin air. He parks his car next to yours. He doesn't stand close to you, instead opting to lean against the trunk of his own car, faking calm, stuffing his hands into his pockets to silence the feeling of wanting to hit you. Thick silence settles over the both of you, lasting for several long minutes. 

"Hi." It's the first word you have said to him in almost a decade. It's so simple, yet so infuriating, making Jesse want to scream.

"Hi." Heavy silence for another few minutes, neither of you knowing what to really say to someone you never thought you would see again. A simentanious sigh makes you both giggle a bit. 

"What the fuck are you doing out here Mccree?"

"I should be the one askin' that question, seein' as I thought ya were dead and all." You sigh, scratching your chin.

"Yeah I guess so. It should have stayed like that."

"Should it?" Jesse glances at you, quieting the angry voices in his head.

"Would have been easier wouldn't it?" Jesse scoffs, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Probably." Another moment of silence, neither of you looking at each other. Jesse is the first to break it.

"How did ya get away anyhow?" 

"I was out of the base when the raid came, on my way back I saw a lot of military vehicles, so decided to turn around and hail my ass out of there." 

"Out of the base? What for?" A horrible thought hits him, making his blood run cold.

"It wasn't ya that gave us up was it?"

"God Mccree, fuck no, it wasn't me." You look at him for the first time since he parked. He doesn't look back.

"I was out buying some god damn batteries and some of that jerky you love- loved back then. I was just... lucky I guess." You run your hand through your hair.

"So ya just up'n left?" The disbelief is clear in his voice. You sigh.

"You make it sound so bad, but yeah, I did. What the fuck was I supposed to do?" Mccree feels the anger boil inside him.

"Ya could have joined me, or ya could have contacted me and gotten me out!" He's yelling now, turning towards you. You yell right back.

"Joined you?! You mean I should have just walked in the damn front door like 'Hey, I'm a member from Deadlock, btw I'm joining just like Jesse Mccree did since he's my best friend." You jump down from the truck-bed.

"And for getting you out? That's a even more insane idea! One fucking person with a laptop against a whole organisation. And even if I had gotten you out, what the fuck would we do?!"

"I don't fucking know!"

"Exactly! You were and are better off in Blackwatch!" That statement makes him pause. He really was, even though he might not want to admit it right then and there. You force yourself to relax.

"Before you say anything, I did actually check in on you. When the worst storm had blown over and it was kinda safe to poke my head out again, I went searching for you. Found out it was Overwatch that was behind the raid; for a while I also thought my best friend were dead. Until I found your file, buried deep in-between others. All it said was that you were moved." You sit back down onto the truck-bed.

"It took me several months from there to understand that 'moved' meant moved to Blackwatch and enrolled in their ranks. From there it took me even longer to get confirmation about which base you were on. I managed to hack into their system and get live video. And there you were, smiling with a dude in a beanie in some sort of common room on a base in Colorado. I could only look for about a minute without risking getting caught." You look at him, something behind your eyes he can't quite read. He can't quite tell what mix of feelings you have right now. He's not even sure of his own.

"You looked so god damn happy Jesse! You looked like you belonged there. I didn't want to take away that from you. I thought about contacting your for years, but I had to let it go." Jesse notices with a start that it's the first time you have used his first name. He sighs, rubbing his eyes before staring out into the air for a few minutes. You say nothing. A few cars drive past before Jesse tentatively speaks.

"Yer' right. Blackwatch was, is better for me. I still do some not good shit, but at least I'm sure someone has my back......." He shuffles his feet.

"Sorry for yelling at ya."

"It's fine. I understand that you're angry, I would have been too." Another stretch of silence, which both of you are really tired of. You clap your hands together and jump down from the truck-bed, turning towards him with a smile.

"Now that the heavy talk is over and done with, let's go to my place and get some food." Jesse snorts.

"Yer invitin' me over for food after all this time, and that just now?" You grin.

"Yeah, why not? You were my best friend at one point, and even if I might never get to that point again, I at least want to be your friend. Also this way we can catch up with each other and disguise awkward pauses with food." Now it Jesse's turn to grin.

"Good plan. By all means, lead the way." You both get into your cars, he follows closely behind you, thoughts swirling in his head. You had made it sound so easy, but he doubts it will be. It will take a good while for him to get over the fact that you were not dead, instead you had been living less than a day's drive from the base where he spent most of his time. He knows you are aware of this, that you are just trying to make things less strained to begin with. He wonders if you will ever get anywhere as close as you used to be. Only time can tell.

**Author's Note:**

> Here we go with another multi chapter fix. I know I got others I should write more on, but lately all I've had the energy for in my downtime is playing Overwatch. So ofc I wanted to write a fic for my favorite Jesse


End file.
